Human Needs
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 | Humanism, Religion & Politics
Last Friday, Gijsbert Stoet presented the One Life session on Human Needs.
One of the interesting discussions that came up was when Gijsbert got us to imagine we were 30 years old and we had kids. The task was to list everything we thought our kids would need in order to live a happy life.
He also asked us to differentiate the lists between boys and girls, if we felt that there was a difference.
But almost nobody did. Obviously I pointed out that a girl needed a pony to be truly happy, but beyond that people produced pretty much identical lists because ultimately this is 2010 and all things being equal, why would you treat boys and girls differently? That isn’t the say there aren’t differences – of course there are – but it terms of bringing up kids, none of us would take the attitude “oh he is a boy so he’ll want to do x or she is a girl so she will want to do y.” Gives you a nice feeling inside with respect to gender equality.
It is also in stark contrast to some of the discussions we have been having recently – many of us are getting annoyed by the sheer quantity of event invites we get on Facebook from the Islamic Society that we are not allowed to attend because they are “sisters only events.”
Last Friday, Gijsbert Stoet presented the One Life session on Human Needs.
One of the interesting discussions that came up was when Gijsbert got us to imagine we were 30 years old and we had kids. The task was to list everything we thought our kids would need in order to live a happy life.
He also asked us to differentiate the lists between boys and girls, if we felt that there was a difference.
But almost nobody did. Obviously I pointed out that a girl needed a pony to be truly happy, but beyond that people produced pretty much identical lists because ultimately this is 2010 and all things being equal, why would you treat boys and girls differently? That isn’t the say there aren’t differences – of course there are – but it terms of bringing up kids, none of us would take the attitude “oh he is a boy so he’ll want to do x or she is a girl so she will want to do y.” Gives you a nice feeling inside with respect to gender equality.
It is also in stark contrast to some of the discussions we have been having recently – many of us are getting annoyed by the sheer quantity of event invites we get on Facebook from the Islamic Society that we are not allowed to attend because they are “sisters only events.”